A Malaysian in Melbourne

Melbourne is a great city. Plenty of things to do here and the weather is great. Their autumn is like summer in the UK.

The Lotus Catering team are always the first ones to arrive and the last ones to leave as we have to set up the kitchen and pack up, so this gives plenty of time for me to explore the places we visit. I went to their Chinatown to see what’s it like. Not much different from London or Manchester’s Chinatown but many more Malaysian restaurants. I was there with my colleagues on the day we arrived. On the way back we all fell asleep on the tram due to jetlag and missed our stop.

Since we arrived, I keep losing track of days and dates. We just got on with work and things get hectic towards the race day. Two days ago I bumped into Lewis Hamilton who took the back alley to go back to his paddock. I guess he was avoiding the press and TV crews wandering around the main aisle. He is so tiny and petite. All the drivers are apart from Mark Webber. He is tall. I also bumped into Schumacher who stayed late before the qualifying day. He walked past in front of me in his white race suit. The experience was surreal. The most talked about figure in the Formula 1 business just walked in front of me! With Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen, there’s no thrill anymore as I see them almost every day but I still get tiny tingle nervous feeling when they start talking to me. How odd.

Anyway about the food, it was commented on the Lotus Facebook page that the food was excellent. So hard work has paid off! This week is not as hard as when I was in Bahrain. It was close for me to decide not to do this anymore as it was really hard. It was not just us in the catering team work so hard, other teams like mechanics, technicians they work hard too.

Tonight I will be flying to Malaysia and I have been warned about the guest list over there but one for all, it will be good and hectic experience. Bye for now.